House Republican Swipes at Musk: ‘Last Time I Checked, Elon Musk Doesn’t Have a Vote in Congress’
Rep. Rich McCormick (R-GA) took a rare step for a Republican lawmaker on Thursday night by dinging Elon Musk and saying the billionaire is pressuring Congress to do what’s right “for him.”
Musk, who spent more than $200 million to support the campaign of President-elect Donald Trump, blew up a bipartisan spending bill on Wednesday that would have avoided a government shutdown this weekend. After Musk sent a flurry of tweets opposing the legislation, Trump followed his lead and slammed the resolution. Ultimately, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) withdrew it.
The episode has put front and center the question of just how much influence Musk has over Trump and Congress, both houses of which will be controlled by the GOP starting in January. Some Democrats have been referring to Musk as the real president.
On Thursday, Johnson introduced a new bill, which Musk and Trump supported. For procedural reasons, it needed two-thirds to pass, but fell well short. McCormick, who was one of 38 Republicans to vote against it, appeared on The Source on CNN to explain his position.
“We’re 24 hours away from a shutdown,” Kaitlan Collins noted. “You voted differently on a bill tonight that would’ve saved this. The question is… what happens next? Have you heard from leadership about what the plan is?”
McCormick responded:
That’s been my big frustration to begin with. We brought this yesterday. Everybody said, “Oh, this is a horrible bill.” We didn’t even bring it to the floor because everybody knew it was gonna be defeated. Then today, we launched this bill without talking to really anybody in the conference about what we changed. And then I was accused of surprising people, of blindsiding people by my opinion when I was never consulted in the first place.
This is a leadership challenge that Mike Johnson has to define himself with. Are you gonna get the right input from the right people to get this bill passed? Because, quite frankly, you can’t do it in a vacuum. And it doesn’t matter because, quite frankly, last time I checked, Elon Musk doesn’t have a vote in Congress. Now, he has influence, and he’ll put pressure on us to do whatever he thinks the right thing is for him. But I have 760,000 people that voted for me to do the right thing for them. And that’s what matters to me.
Watch above via CNN.
